Stanley Drucker’s Last Stand

Fortune smiled upon the unsuspecting audience attending the New York Philharmonic’s annual visit to the NJPAC. Whether the majority of patrons sensed the occasion it seemed not to matter once the proceedings got under way. Until seeing the program being presented you could count this writer as one of the happily unaware symphony goers, and only because of a friend’s inconvenient illness did a ticket to the event become available.

The orchestra would be saying a fond farewell to the current music director Lorin Maazel at the conclusion of the ’08-‘09 season, which produced no anguished cries from any circle in NYC’s artistic community. His reign as Music Director was stable if uneventful. As if to confirm this evaluation of his tenure the evening’s program was the stuff which relegates the mission of a great performing organization to dutiful rather than exploratory. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel), a Bach Brandenburg Concerto (the second-chair violinists and principal flautist on display), and Ravel’s Bolero concluding the evening. Hopeful that Mazzel would bring new insights to these orchestral mainstays was wishful thinking, but the occasional New Jersey concert-goers were entertained by the affair.

But another more significant farewell would also take place this evening. The longtime first chair clarinetist Stanley Drucker, veteran for 60 years playing under eight different music directors in that span, would be performing his final duties with the concert being presented. His appearance would raise the profile of this event from ordinary to extraordinary. The work chosen as his swan song was one closely associated with both Drucker and the NY Phil, Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto. Mr. Drucker turned in his 61st performance of this provocative piece, performing the technically challenging runs and difficult syncopated rhythms as if he, not Benny Goodman, were the original performer the work was written for.

Of course we are indebted to the forward-thinking King of Swing for commissioning Copland to write Goodman a show piece. Copland labored over a two-year period, grasping to find that most important upbeat jazzy middle movement theme that propels the music from the languid opening and into a breathtaking second movement, filled with the rhythmic influences from Copland’s South American retreats. Always on display from the composer are his keen sense of orchestral contrast (not an easy task with the forces at hand: strings, harp and piano) and his instinct for driving home the thematic materials while never engaging in exact repetition. How a work so full of engaging solo and orchestral materials seemingly never duplicated from one measure to next can come in at 16 minutes means one thing: Copland vigorously explored his ideas with precision and tact. That’s what makes the composer a great composer, the fact that his music can withstand constant scrutiny and still begs for more exploration.

Some of Mr. Drucker’s many performances took place on one particular tour through Japan in 1970, when Leonard Bernstein chose the work as the sole representative of American music on the program. Now, twenty-nine years later, same orchestra being lead by his eighth music director (and, roughly estimated, the 600th conductor he played under), the 80-year-old clarinetist was performing feats of instrumental acrobatics. Having the technical challenges firmly under his fingers after 60 performances isn’t surprising, but still it was impossible not to marvel at the big tone given to the plaintive melodies, the volume which amply rose over the orchestra, and the ease which the fiendishly difficult cadenza was tackled. It was wonderful to hear this piece in concert for the first time (yes, that can still happen, regardless how many concerts one attends), and it was an historical event: placing the greatest of American composers, orchestras and one tireless performer together on a night when “dutiful” was simply not going to do.